A list I put together of both essential and awesome mathcore and progressive/weird/technical/whatever-you-wanna-call-it metalcore. For those that don't know, "mathcore" is given its name because of how insanely technical it often is, with all its crazy time signature changes and strange patterns and such. You could say that, musically, mathcore kinda fucks with numbers. But GOOD mathcore does not just do this for the sake of it, they use these obscene, violent frenzies of notes creatively, in order to express the messages of their songs.

Even if it's not the first mathcore album (although it probably is), it's definitely the most influential. What happens in just 30 short seconds off a single song on this album is nothing short of mind-blowing. This album revealed so many edges that metalcore could be taken to. And not only that, but all the insane sweeps and retardedly complicated patterns on this album are played...not pretentiously. Yeah, I don't get it, either.

Incredible. Influential. And absolutely sickeningly underrated. I mean, the people that know about it give it the credit it deserves, it's just that more people need to know about it. I have a feeling there's a lot of bands out there who play this style that don't even know of this album, or even band's existence. In short, before there was Norma Jean, there was Botch.

One of the weirdest, heaviest, most uncompromising, and best mathcore albums out there. Although it sounds like wankery, all those seemingly random notes are there for a purpose. Stories are being told here.

I guess you would call this more "progressive deathcore," but there aren't really a whole lot of bands that stay strictly to that, so...here's Veil of Maya. This album is absolutely bursting at the seams with potential. So many good riffs everywhere, it just needs some more cohesiveness.

Yeah, this album's kinda lacking, but a good handful of the songs have really awesome parts. And you gotta admit that "An Ascent" is fucking sweet all the way through. Definitely one of the band's best songs.